Anyone who is doing business over the internet needs to have secure web hosting. There are many security threats, and anytime you're dealing with customer data you need to be sure it's safe from prying eyes. This is especially true if you're using a shared host, where multiple websites are hosted on a single server.
If you're considering shared hosting for your business website, check with your hosting company to find out what kind of security they use on their systems. You want to be 100% sure that your website is not accessible by any of the other people hosted on that same server.
You should also find out about the host's policies regarding scripts and software installed on the server. If unproven code is allowed, it can lead to problems if someone else on the server is running a program that is poorly written.
The third thing you need to check is what the host's policies are regarding operating system upgrades and maintenance. Windows gets most of the bad press about security problems, but they happen on Linux and Unix as well. You want to be sure your host applies these fixes quickly once they are released.
Fourth, find out how often your host audits their security, and whether they do it themselves or use a third-party to do it for them. Even the best maintained systems can sometimes fail, and having an audit done - especially by a third-party - can sometimes uncover problems before they get exploited.
Finally, take steps to protect yourself as well. Don't use easy-to-guess passwords for your website, and don't use the same password for everything. If someone can guess your password, they can wreak havoc on your site.
These five steps will go a long way to ensuring that your website and - most importantly - your customers' personal data are safe and secure from attack or theft.
About the Author:
John Lenaghan writes about web site hosting and other related topics for the Hosting Report website. Get more helpful hosting information at http://www.hostingreport.org/
5 Steps To Ensuring Your Website Is Secure
Web Hosting Terminology
Bandwidth (or Transfer or Data Transfer) Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is sent (and recieved) by your website. It is usually measured in gigabytes (GB), where 1 GB = 1024 megabytes (MB), and it is usually allocated on a monthly basis, for example you could have 5GB/month of bandwidth, which means that there is a limit of 5GB of files that can be downloaded from your site within a month. Bandwidth is only a concern if you host a lot of files, for example images or movies, as webpages are usually small file sizes.
Colocation Server (or Colocation Hosting) This is similar to Dedicated Hosting (see below), except the server is owned by a customer and they pay the colocation hosting company to host the server for them - that involves paying a charge for bandwitch which the hosting company provide, the physical space which the server takes up and the power that the server uses. With this set up the customer is responsible for their hardware.
Control Panel This is a web page with a usable interface which the customer can connect to when they want to tweak their hosting settings, view the transfer statistics, or utilise other features provided with their hosting.
Dedicated Server (or Dedicated Hosting) This is a server which is owned by the hosting company which they will rent out to you for a monthly fee along with an allotment of bandwidth which you can use with it. This means that you get a whole server to yourself to use for what you desire, this is needed for scripts which use a lot of server resources (for example large message boards, for one of which I pay for a dedicated server). As a customer, you would have full control over the server and could change the configuration as required, a facility not available when you have to share a server with others. With a dedicated server, the web hosting company is responsible for the hardware as they own it, not the customer.
Disk Space This is the amount of space on the server that you have to upload your files on, it\'s usually measured in MB or GB.
MySQL This is a type of database (as is PostgreSQL) which allows the customer to store and retrieve information on the server. A lot of scripts require that a database is present to function.
Reseller Hosting This is similar to Virtual Hosting (see below), but the customer is given the ability to create small hosting accounts of their own, which they can then give or sell to people if they desire. It usually allows the customer more features, bandwidth and diskspace than with normal virtual hosting.
Scripts (eg PHP, Perl, ASP)These are server side scripting languages which allow the customer to use already written scripts, or write their own, which provide additional features for the website and increased interactivity (for example message boards and content management systems).
Virtual Hosting (or Shared Hosting) This is where a webhosting company puts many customers\' webpages on the same server - so the server resources are shared amongst all the customers using it. This means that applications which cause a high server load are not suitable, and if one customer uses one then other customers will suffer.
Reprinted from www.heydo.com
